Tuesday, August 23, 2005

A five-year-old girl was raped and murdered in my City. It was a brutal and highly despicable crime.

But the irony is that the first question asked after the crime is that 'who has done it'?

That was not because of the normal curiosity. It was just to ascertain the religion of the person.

Mercifully, most of the rapes of minors in the last year in this City saw Hindu assailants and Hindu victims.

Had it been a Muslim accused in even a single case, there might have been a retaliatory violence or even a communal riot. What has happened to our sensibilities?

If a Muslim is found indulging in eve teasing it leads to a riot-like situation. Similarly, if a Muslim girl is raped by a Hindu, it leads to communal tension. Unfortunately the magnitude of the crime, the trauma of the victim and the other aspects of crime are forgotten.

What is thought about is just religion. Media has also to be blamed as it is not fair always. Far from being objective, it is plain sensationalist. There have been incidents when a man from majority community committed sexual assault but effort was made to dilute the crime by terming him as 'mentally deranged person'.

The situation has come to such a passe that one has to ironically, expect, that women would suffer only at the hands of their own co-religionists. Isn't it shameful. Why should they face it at all. The debate should be on why there is so much violence against women in the society.

And why there is growing trend of rapes, molestation, burning of women for dowry and acid attacks on them. Can anything be more unfortunate for a society in this age and era?

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